AUTHOR=Guarnieri Valentina , Moriondo Maria , Giovannini Mattia , Lodi Lorenzo , Ricci Silvia , Pisano Laura , Barbacci Paola , Bini Costanza , Indolfi Giuseppe , Zanobini Alberto , Azzari Chiara TITLE=Surveillance on Healthcare Workers During the First Wave of SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Italy: The Experience of a Tertiary Care Pediatric Hospital JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health VOLUME=9 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.644702 DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2021.644702 ISSN=2296-2565 ABSTRACT=
Healthcare workers (HCWs) play a central role in handling the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Monitoring HCWs, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, through screening programs, are critical to avoid the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the hospital environment to rapidly identify and isolate infected individuals and to allow their prompt return to work as soon as necessary. We aim to describe our healthcare surveillance experience (April 2–May 6, 2020) based on a combined screening consisting of real-time PCR (RT-PCR) on nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs and rapid serologic tests (RST) for SARS-CoV-2 in all HCWs of Meyer Children's University Hospital in Florence. Among the analyzed workers, 13/1690 (0.8%), all of them without clinical manifestations, was found positive for SARS-CoV-2 by using RT-PCR on NP swab: 8/1472 (0.5%) were found positive during the screening, 1/188 (0.5%) during contact with a positive individual (